Science Fiction

How would human civilization look if it had survived for a billion years? This is the key idea Clarke poses and explores in this novel. It is well written and proposes some believable answers to that question.

Sadly enough, this book was quite a disappointment to me. As successor to The Three-Body Problem, it again tries to pose some thought provoking questions. But in the end these interesting nuggets were far too few, and the remainder of the book felt flat and unimaginative.

This is a short story focused around colonialism and exploitation, and seems to have originated from Le Guin's exasperation about the morality of exploitation in the U.S's foreign politics, such as the Vietnam war and atomic weapon testing. It takes place in her universe of the Hainish Cycle, and tells a story of humans trying to colonize a planet with other pre-existing native humanoids. It is definitely worth a read at its measly 100 pages.

I became completely enamored by the writings of Le Guin, when rediscovering her through reading The Left Hand of Darkness. Therefore, I had very high expectations when reading this book, and although it was good, it did not really capture the same magic as the aforementioned book. I do recommend reading it if one enjoys Le Guin's style, as she still excels with the idea of exploring thought experiments, but I would probably recommend starting with one of her other books.

Neuromancer was an early and very influential work within the cyberpunk genre. This made it a big hit, as it created a novel and immersive cyberpunk world, full of avatars and cyberspace.

I read Snow Crash when I desperately needed a break from Neuromancer, and found it similar, but more enjoyable and well-written in many ways. It might have one of my favorite opening chapters of all time, and proceeds to create an incredibly immersive portrayal of a cyberpunk ultra-capitalistic America after a world-wide economic collapse. Over 30 years later, its portrayal of technology and the metaverse are still relatively realistic and thought provoking.

I happened to stumble upon this book (partly due to a recommendation by ChatGPT) and did not have that large expectations. However, it caught me completely off guard and became one of my favorite books in a long time, even though it is over 50 years old. Le Guin has included an excellent introduction, where she partly describes her science fiction books as large thought experiments about the consequences of altering reality.